Desperate Times

by Tom Andry

  "Bob, take it easy."

  "What the hell," I looked down. Where I should have had two complete legs, the left ended at an ankle and the right was cut off mid-thigh. "Huh, would you look at that. Doesn't even hurt." I reached down to where my right leg should be, waving my hand through the empty space. Nope, not just invisible. I touched the stump. It was hot, smoking still.

  "That's the shock, Bob."

  I shook my head. I couldn't deal with this leg thing right now. Still, something smelled good. I hadn't eaten in...hours? Days?

  I couldn't think about that now. I needed to get Nineteen back. I'd told her to make everyone forget. Even Ted. If she'd managed it, that meant he wasn't coming. He wasn't going to teleport here with anyone. I had one of the teleporters synced to his base. I could take her back. I tried to stand and again fell over.

  "What the..." I looked down. "Oh yeah. Legs." I giggled.

  I rolled Nissa over, unwrapping Nineteen like a present. Or a yo-yo. Yeah. More like a yo-yo. That's a funny word, yo-yo. Wait, no, more like a cinnamon roll. God, I was hungry. I pulled Nineteen to me, searching my pockets for the blue teleporter...or a candy bar. I'd had a blue teleporter with me. It was...

  Damn, I'd left it back in the desert.

  But I still had a bunch of them. They were all still synced to Ted's base. Nineteen rested against my chest as I lay on my side. I stroked her head absently as I tried to remember where I'd left them. I was so tired. I'd put them in a box. Maybe a cat food box? I couldn't remember. Definitely something that had cans in it at one point. I was sure of that. Maybe chili. I could really go for some chili. Anything warm.

  "Hey, Mind. I think she's getting better. Her head's not so hot any more. Yeah, I think her fever broke." I continued to stroke her hair, my stomach growling, "Yeah, I think she's going to be alright."

  * * *

  "Oh Jesus, Bob. Oh God. Look at you."

  "Gale?" I couldn't see. Everything was a hazy blur.

  "I'm here. I'm here. The paramedics are here too. We're going to get you fixed up."

  "Ma'am? We're going to need some information. If you could just come with me."

  "Fixed up? Why?" I could barely make out two blurs hovering over me.

  "Sir, you've been badly hurt. But we're going to take the best care of you. Count yourself lucky - you have such powerful friends."

  "Friends?"

  "Yeah, everyone is clamoring for a super and we've got all of them looking after you."

  "Not Ted."

  "What did he say?"

  "I don't know, sir, can you repeat that?"

  I reached toward one of the blurs, flailing, trying to grab on to them, "Not Ted. Don't let Ted near me."

  "Oh...um...okay sir. We won't. We promise."

  I closed my eyes.

  "Who's Ted?"

  "Beats me. Probably the shock. Let's get him up. On three. One...two..."

  # # #

  Chapter 26

  "I know you're awake," a familiar voice in the darkness. “I can tell by the change in your breathing.

  I licked my lips. I was thirsty. So thirsty my mouth felt like it'd been packed in salt and then sandblasted for good measure. If she knew I was awake, she was the first. I just found out.

  "Water," I croaked.

  Something cold and wet touched my lips. I pulled them apart and a small piece of crushed ice entered, melting excruciatingly slowly. I opened my eyes. Gale stood over me wearing, for the first time in years, a dress. A simple number with a conservative neckline and short sleeves. Her hair was pulled loosely back away from her face. She looked like she did when we were in college together. Before she revealed her powers. Correction: before I encouraged her to reveal her powers.

  "Thanks."

  She smiled. "You're a real dumbass, you know?"

  I tried to push myself up, but failed, coughing, falling back into the raised portion of the bed. My body was covered by sheets and my head felt like I'd gone ten rounds with a super that had a brick wall for a hand. "You'll be shocked to learn that you're not the first person to tell me that."

  Gale glanced over her shoulder, "Before the others come in, I have one question for you." Her eyes locked with mine, still a bit hazy from recently waking, "The girl. Who was she?"

  I blinked at her, confused. Girl? Which girl?

  Gale shook her head. "Damn, you don't remember either. So that you hear it from me: we found you at your apartment, unconscious, clutching a little girl. No one remembers her. We think she's the reason The Raven was after you."

  I rubbed my eyes, memory returning. I hid an unsteady breath, looking at the blankets, not wanting to think about the little girl with the white eyes, "Is she okay?"

  Gale turned as the door behind her opened slowly, "She was dead. Doctors said it was from some sort of massive brain hemorrhage." Gale held the door as Nissa, Rod and a female doctor entered.

  My throat closed up. The others were greeting each other, stealing glances my way, whispering to each other.

  Dead.

  I painted a smile on my face, "Hey. So, you're okay," I directed toward Nissa.

  She smiled back. "Yeah, thanks to you." Parts of her face were smeared with some sort of cream for the burns, but overall she looked okay, "I'm not sure what I would have done if you hadn't pulled me out of there when The Raven...my father," she corrected herself with a frown, "overpowered me."

  I shrugged, "Call it a severance package." She smiled back, her mohawk combed back and pulled into a rather ordinary ponytail. Apparently, she, too, had a secret identity now.

  "So that was the big secret, huh? Dad?"

  Nissa nodded glumly, unwilling to meet my eyes.

  "So now you know."

  "Huh?" Nissa finally met my eyes.

  "Why he left."

  She shook her head slowly.

  "He didn't want to watch you die." I looked at Gale who was finding something interesting in the wallpaper, "Can't say I blame him."

  "I..." Nissa stammered, "I never thought about that."

  "Your mom must have a power," Gale muttered.

  "If she does, I've never seen it," Nissa responded, her voice far away.

  "So, how long have I been out?" I turned the conversation back to the occupant of the room.

  The female doctor stepped forward, a generous smile on too red lips, "Nearly thirty-six hours. Though half of that was surgery."

  "Surgery?"

  She smiled again. "You might not remember because of the shock. You were injured in the teleportation. The Raven pulled your legs outside of the field. The field severed your left leg at the ankle and your right leg at mid-thigh."

  Images of the battle flashed through my mind. Terrible moments. Moments full of decisions and pain. Enough pain that many of the details were obscured. But I remembered it all. Maybe not the gory details, but the highlights.

  "Luckily the designer of the device was brilliant enough to build in a cauterization function. It could have severed the limb and left the wound open. With the left leg, you might have lived. But with the right, you'd have bled out in minutes. That designer saved your life."

  "Oh did he?"

  "Oh yes," she continued enthusiastically, "and to rush over so selflessly and tirelessly to work through the night during your surgery."

  "Wait," I interrupted, "you worked on me?"

  "Me?" she placed a palm on her ample breasts. "No, I don't have the skill, the knowledge, nay even the devotion to my friends that this super had. Oh if only I had an ounce of his intelligence, his fortitude, his..." she waved a well-manicured hand in the air, "je ne sais quoi." She paused for emphasis then took a deep, fluttering breath, her eyes watering, "That man's a hero."

  "Enough, Ted, I know it's you."

  She put her hands on her hips as Rod passed a stack of money over to Gale who split it with Nissa, "How did you know?"

  "Please. Red lipstick, so top heavy as to risk falling over, manicured nails? Only on television and in your sick
dreams do doctors look like that."

  She shook her head and then reached down to grasp the edge of the blanket covering my legs. "I know this is probably not what you wanted, but I'm not good with people." She pulled back the blanket revealing an alarming amount of what looked to be chrome.

  "Damn," tears welled up in my eyes, "damn you, Ted. What have you done?"

  The girl looked hurt, "I saved your life, man. If we hadn't done something, and quick, you'd have been wheelchair bound at best. Probably dead."

  Through the water in my eyes, I studied my lower body. Where there were once legs and feet, now there were metal replacements. The right leg looked like something out of a science fiction movie, the left foot no better. The metal followed the contours of the musculature of a leg and feet from what I could remember from anatomy class and all those posters in doctor's offices. Even the toes had tiny metallic nails. I tried to pull my legs up to my chest, but only the left responded. It was too heavy, the metal foot dragging. The skin where it met the metal was red and puffy and started to crack and bleed as I pulled.

  I'd seen metal connected to skin before. I had hoped never to see it again. And now I'd see it every day.

  "Whoa, whoa," the doctor that was Ted pushed down on my knee keeping me from moving, "you'll rip it off."

  "Oh God, oh God," I chanted to myself, "what have you done?" Tears streamed down my cheeks, my breath in gasps.

  Gale stepped forward, concern etched on her face. In our relationship she'd seen me cry less than a handful of times, "It's okay, Bob. I made sure he didn't add any gadgets or anything special. Once they're completed you won't even know they aren't real."

  That wasn't it. It wasn't close to it. A super wouldn't understand. It was the loss of my daughter. The loss of my life, my love, my wife. I'd lost everything and the one thing I had left, my humanity, had just been taken as well. My eyes darted around the room, looking for a safe haven. Nissa looked equal parts concerned and uncomfortable, her eyes darting to the other supers, unsure how to react. Gale looked worried and confused, wishing to hold my eyes, probably to see if I was faking. I avoided Ted's fake face. Rod was looking out the window, cleaning his nails, his expression bored and disgusted. I tried to push myself up and failed again, my head hitting the raised pillow hard. I gasped, my breaths coming quick and shallow, turning my head to the side, trying to keep the supers out of my field of vision.

  Damn them all.

  There were windows on both sides of the room. The one that Rod was using looked out on the city; the one I was facing looked out over a hallway and part of the nurse's station. In front of the nurse’s station, in a chair straining under the excessive weight, was Flamer...Fire Arc...Shawn O'Malley...whatever. His head was bowed and he looked like he was crying, great sobs wracking his huge frame. His hair was patchy and burnt, parts of it all the way to the scalp. In his hands, he held a piece of metal, a curved and dented shard of aluminum. I squinted at it as he flipped it over, revealing the tips of pink flames on a white background.

  I laughed explosively, sending spittle and tears spraying all over the window. The absurdity. The Raven had just killed thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people and Shawn was crying over a car.

  I cried; I laughed; I lost track of time. Images from the last few days spiraled through my head in no particular order. It was as if my memories were the glowing teleportation devices and I was at the center of the tornado. They didn't make sense. None of it made sense. It was too much. Too little. Too wide. Too deep. And just way too ridiculous. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't. The real world wasn't like this. It was normal, with people grieving over people and not cars. Legs weren't replaced with metal monstrosities. It didn't happen. It couldn't.

  Someone was screaming. Maybe more than a few someones. I caught my reflection in something. Maybe it was the rear view mirror of Automageddon. I laughed anew. Naming cars! Now that was funny. My eyes were wide, bulging. I looked crazed. Old. Young. I saw myself as a college kid, young and in love. Myself as an old man, telling his kids about the coming rain from the pain in his metal knee. Kids. Kid.

  Daughter.

  The screaming subsided as I felt a pinprick in my neck. I blinked my eyes, but the water wouldn't clear. Someone was on top of me, someone heavy, pushing my head hard into the pillow. Around their form, I could still see the hallway, but Shawn was thankfully blocked. A woman in a wheelchair was being pushed by a man through a doorway. They were smiling, balloons and flowers stacked up in the arms of two trailing nurses. The woman looked down at a lump in her arms wrapped in a pink blanket.

  Daughter.

  I gasped and closed my eyes.

  * * *

  "So, rehab is going well?" Dr. DeSoto queried as he did every week at this time, scratching absently at the mole near his ear with the eraser end of his pencil.

  "Yep."

  "And the walking?"

  I adjusted the cane across my lap, "Better."

  "And your nightmares?"

  "Couldn't be better. I wake like a summer rain, light and refreshed."

  DeSoto scowled, "Bob, I'm your doctor. Anything you say in here is confidential."

  I laughed lightly, "Sure it is."

  "Are you questioning my ethics?"

  "No," I responded casually, "just your naivety."

  "Bob, I know we all worry about privacy with supers that can see through walls and hear things from miles away, but that doesn't mean they're listening or watching us all the time. They're people, just like us. Just with fancier toys."

  "Is that really what you believe?"

  "Sure! So what's the difference between a super with X-ray vision and a tippy with a telescope and a good angle?"

  "A couple of orders of magnitude in my book."

  "Be serious, Bob. It's a serious question."

  "Okay, how about this. I can go out and buy a telescope. You can. Anyone can. But only a super can have the X-ray vision. Which isn't X-ray at all. They just call it that. See, that's just the thing. We know what a telescope is. Nobody but the supers know what X-ray vision is or how it works or, for that matter, how to stop it. I can stop a peeping Tom with a telescope by pulling the curtains. How to do you stop X-ray vision?"

  DeSoto put his hands up, "You're getting off topic here. You say all of us can get a telescope, but that's not really true is it? You and I can because we have the means. But many tippys don't."

  "Not in any small part due to the fact that the Super State has a lock on all the smartest people on the planet."

  He waved his pencil dismissively, "More paranoid rhetoric and you're smart enough to know it. The fact is that there are only so many supers. A lot fewer since The Raven, a super, that you, a tippy, helped defeat."

  It wasn't true, but he didn't know that. All I did was put a little girl in a position where she had to fight him, an act I wasn't proud of, and certainly hadn't helped me sleep any better.

  "No, Bob, the key is that they have better things to be doing then spying on tippys."

  I shook my head, "Really? So tell me, doc, how many times this week did Gale call about me?"

  He shrugged uncomfortably, "You know I can't talk about my patients, Bob."

  I scowled, "Exactly. You feel free to sell that line to the rest of your patients. Hell, it's probably true. But not for me." I grabbed my cane and stood, leaning lightly on it, "We're done here."

  The doctor nodded, "Wait. We still have lots of time."

  "Fat chance, doc. You're a nice guy and all, but I agreed to six months after my 'episode'. It's been that, to the day. I'm out." I pulled down my white T-shirt over the top of my belted jeans.

  DeSoto pushed his glasses up his nose with the end of his pencil, "Bob, I don't think that's a good idea. I really feel like you have some things you need to work out. I think I can help."

  I turned to the door, shaking my head, "Maybe I do, doc, but not now."

  "What will you do? Go back to work?"

  I opened the doo
r and stepped out, "Didn't you hear, doc? I'm retired." I closed the door on a skeptical DeSoto. I limped down the hall, half smile on my face. I turned the corner to the elevators and I slammed into a small woman.

  "Ohh!" I cried, my cane bouncing across the floor.

  She was so busy rifling through a purse the size of a shopping bag that she ran right into me. Her dark, straight hair falling over her face as she gathered up her purse and my cane, apologies falling from her lips like a waterfall. I recognized the voice instantly.

  "Liz."

  She froze, standing up slowly, her eyes wide behind the curtain of hair. "Bob."

  A frantic smile shattered my shocked expression, "Hey, Liz," I stammered. "Uh, I, uh, called."

  She pulled the hair over her right ear, the skin mercifully unblemished, "I know. I've been busy."

  "Yeah...um..." I'd been trying to reconnect with Liz since that night. She hadn't been taking my calls. But now that I had her in front of me, I found I didn't know what to say. "How are you feeling?"

  "Okay. I guess." Her head dropped, gravity pulling the hair from behind her ear.

  "You're mad." It was as I’d feared. No, that was a lie. As I'd known. I'd just hoped she might not be mad. She had told me to stay out and I hadn't.

  "No, that's not it," she said breathlessly. It was as if she were continuing a conversation she'd had a thousand times in her head.

  "Then what is it?"

  "I...don't know." She looked toward, but not at me, pulling her hair back over her right ear again, "It's nothing. Just busy that's all." She smiled, stiffly.

  I reached out slowly, her eyes following my hand. I pulled the hair away from her left side. It wasn't as bad as I thought. The skin mostly looked a little crinkled, like the texture of a flat potato chip. There were a couple of larger scars that looked like raised lines of pink over her pale skin.

  "That's not so bad," I commented, "Gives you character."

  "Yeah, that's what I needed," she muttered. "Anyways, the doctors say the scars will fade. In ten years or so you'll barely notice them."